The Week In Review: IoT

M&A
ARM Holdings this week announced the acquisition of two firms, Mistbase and NextG-Com, to help bring narrowband Internet of Things technology to its chip designs. In addition, the company announced the development of ARM Cordio-N radios to reduce the complexity of adopting cellular IoT connectivity. Meanwhile, Blu Wireless Technology of the U.K. reported that ARM made an equity investment in the company, along with other private and strategic investors. Blu Wireless offers semiconductor and system intellectual property for millimeter-wave and high-bandwidth wireless communications.

Deals
AT&T and Carrier have reached an agreement on using the telecommunications company’s wireless connectivity to build Internet of Things network intelligence into heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. Connecting to AT&T’s network will enable Carrier Smart Service to enhance its remote equipment monitoring, data collection, and analytics capabilities, the companies said.

Yokogawa Electric is working with Bayshore Networks, FogHorn Systems, Microsoft, and Telit IoT Platforms to develop an Industrial Internet of Things architecture. Mind Commerce forecasts the North American and European IIoT markets will be worth about $600 billion by 2021.

Security
The Department of Homeland Security awarded nearly $1 million to five companies working in its “Securing the Internet of Things” program. Factom, Ionic Security, Machine-to-Machine Intelligence, Pulzze Systems, and Whitescope received the DHS grants.

Products
Cadence Design Systems has worked with CommSolid to integrate a Tensilica Fusion F1 digital signal processor with CommSolid’s CSN130 baseband offering to operate an ultra-low-power modem and Internet of Things applications, including audio identification, sensor fusion, and voice triggering.

Silicon Labs is providing ZigBee technology to support Sengled’s Element connected light bulb, which employs light-emitting diodes. The Sengled light bulb is said to use 80% less energy than incandescent bulbs.

MobileIron this week announced the formation of its Internet of Things division, with plans to offer an IoT product in 2017. Santhosh Nair, previously the vice president and general manager of Wind River’s IoT business unit, has joined MobileIron to lead the IoT division, which the company said “will focus on building an end-to-end chain of trust from sensor to app to gateway to cloud to network.”

Parasoft is offering software testing tools for IoT applications and devices. The company’s portfolio for IoT includes: Static and runtime analysis for immediate defect identification; unit, functional, API, performance, and security testing; virtual test environments and components via service virtualization to expedite testing; intelligent analytics to focus the team’s efforts on risk or changing areas; dashboards and reporting to communicate software readiness. Parasoft provides a free copy of its Virtualize CE software to simulate IoT-dependent systems.

Sequans Communications reports it picked Think Silicon‘s NEMA|p graphics processing unit and NEMA|dc display controllers as a component for its new Monarch SX LTE-for-IoT system-on-a-chip device.

Market Research
Strategy Analytics will have analysts attending and speaking at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. On Wednesday, March 1, the firm will have a presentation on “IoT & 5G Use Cases & Challenges,” scheduled for 8:30 a.m. at the Fira Barcelona.

TechSci Research estimates the IoT services market will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 24% between now and 2021. The firm has a report available here.

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